Overview:
A woman who has had multiple family members with dementia and Alzheimer's was honored by the city for her awareness-raising efforts.
In recent years a number of dementia care options in Richmond and nearby have been shuttered, leaving families with few respite options.
Contra Costa is expected to see the number of people with Alzheimer's disease to increase rapidly.
In Contra Costa County more than 21,000 people were living with Alzheimer’s disease in 2019. That number is likely closer to 30,000 now and is expected to grow at a fast rate.
Yet in Richmond, one of the county’s largest cities, people with Alzheimer’s have limited options for day care.
Anjanette Ellison, 54, can understand the significance of this perhaps more than most. She’s watched five family members (four grandparents and her father) suffer from the effects of Alzheimer’s and dementia.
The Fairfield resident remembers how hard it was to care for Telethia Ellison, her paternal grandmother who had dementia. She would shuttle back and forth from her job at the Social Security Administration to her grandmother’s house in the middle of the day to prepare meals and change her diaper.
It was daunting, Ellison told Richmondside, to balance work, her kids, and caring for her grandmother.
Resources for people with dementia
If you’re worried about a loved one with dementia, visit Contra Costa Health’s 2025 Senior Resource Directory. Some nearby care centers include:
- Center for Elder’s Independence: 3645 San Pablo Dam Road, El Sobrante; accepts MediCal, MediCare, and private pay patients. (Also has facilities in Concord and Oakland.)
- Choice in Aging: Mt. Diablo Center for Adult Day Health Care, 490 Golf Club Road, Pleasant Hill; The Bedford Center, 1811 C St., Antioch; may accept private pay, MediCal Managed Care and VA insurance.
- Lamorinda Adult Respite Center, 433 Moraga Way, Orinda; Social day program for 15 clients, transportation not included. There is a waiting list.
“Sometimes you don’t think you’re gonna make it,” she said, “but you just gotta stay positive and keep yourself going.”
Ellison said Richmonders need more resources. Following the closure of the city’s only fulltime Alzheimer’s respite care center, there aren’t adequate publicly available resources to support individuals and families with Alzheimer’s and dementia in Richmond and Contra Costa County.
Richmonders with dementia need a place to go
An adult day care program for her grandmother would have been helpful, Ellison said. Ideally, such a program would be located downtown, so people could “ just drop off their loved ones there, go to work and come back and pick ’em up. Just like a child daycare,” she said.
There was one on Nevin Avenue in Richmond. Deborah Price Janke, the former executive director of the now-closed West County Adult Day Care and Alzheimer’s Respite Center, said that the center closed in 2020 due to COVID transmission concerns.
Janke told Richmondside, “Being a day center, we could not control exposure to the COVID-19 virus in a way that assisted living facilities could, by limiting visitors.” Since the center’s frail and elderly clients lived at home, there was no way to control their exposure to the virus. The consequences of transmitting the potentially deadly virus could have been disastrous.
“Sometimes you don’t think you’re gonna make it but you just gotta stay positive and keep yourself going.” — Anjanette Ellison (left), who created a foundation to help families of dementia patients (Photo courtesy of Anjanette Ellison)
“It was a perfect storm,” said Janke of the pandemic. “If there had been any other way [around this issue], we would have found it.”
Around the same time, funding concerns caused a wave of closures of other Alzheimer’s day centers in the county. The Center for Elder’s Independence (CEI) closed an adult day center in El Sobrante in 2023. Alzheimer’s Services of the East Bay, which ran an adult day care center in Berkeley, closed in 2024.
As a result, the Contra Costa Health Plan had to relocate members to Choice in Aging centers in Pleasant Hill and Antioch, said a Contra Costa Health spokesperson in an email. CEI has since opened up a new center in El Sobrante.
“There’s not really a place where there is a centered focus just on dementia and Alzheimer’s” in Richmond that is available for new clients, Ellison said.
Some of this vacuum has been filled by faith-based organizations. Kathleen Januszewski, the program director at the Lamorinda Adult Respite Center at Holy Shepherd Lutheran Church in Orinda, oversees a social day program for those with mild to moderate dementia. Clients come from as far as San Ramon.
Due to space limitations, she accepts about 15 people a day. There is a wait list, but she recognizes that families needing help “really can’t wait.”
“I wish we had more resources,” Januszewski said about dementia care in Contra Costa County.
The Watson-Ellison Foundation was created to spread awareness about dementia
Dementia is a general term that describes changes in memory, thinking and behavior that can disrupt everyday life. Age is the most significant risk factor for developing dementia, but dementia is not a normal part of aging.
Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia, accounting for 60% to 80% of dementia cases. The California Department of Health projects a 147% increase in the number of people living with Alzheimer’s disease by 2040. Among the 15 most populous counties in California, Contra Costa County is tied with Alameda County for the highest projected increase of residents with Alzheimer’s.
In 2021, Ellison created the Watson-Ellison Foundation to spread awareness about dementia and offer support services. The foundation is named after her paternal grandfather, Douglas Ellison, a Richmond police sergeant who had Alzheimer’s, and her maternal grandmother Inez Watson, who had dementia.
help families of people with dementia. Courtesy of Anjanette Ellison
In January the Richmond City Council issued a proclamation honoring the foundation and the lives and service of its two namesakes.
Ellison said that in the early 2000s, doctors couldn’t offer her grandparents much in terms of diagnosis and treatment, Ellison said. But more research has been done since then, and early detection is now possible.
Common tools doctors use for early detection of dementia include cognitive tests, brain scans, and blood tests. The FDA has also approved two new drugs to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s.
“So make sure that you go get those tests,” if you see any sign of dementia, said Ellison.
In recent years, more research has also been done on adjunct therapies. For example, music therapy has been shown to improve mood and reduce depression in those with Alzheimer’s.
The Watson-Ellison Foundation offers music therapy and currently has five clients. If clients can’t come to the foundation for therapy, the foundation will arrange a way to go to the client, Ellison says.
Remembering Douglas Ellison, a police officer and loving grandfather
Douglas Ellison was Richmond’s first Black police sergeant and a member of the department for 27 years. He died of Alzheimer’s in 2006 at age 67. The disease is one of the Top 10 causes of death for African-Americans according to the CDC.
Ellison has fond memories of him.
“He used to call me ‘squirt’ because I’m short,” she said. (She is 4’9. Her grandfather was 6’2.)
“He was the strongest person I knew. He was my hero.”
Douglas Ellison was born and raised in Richmond. “He loved Richmond,” and was always trying to show her parts of the city, Ellison said.
“He was always preaching and teaching, but the way he would do it would be like you’re just having fun,” said Ellison. He taught her how to fish, how to pump gasoline, and the difference between rich and wealthy, Ellison recalled.
She first knew something was wrong when she invited him to her graduation in 1998 from Contra Costa College — his alma mater. She remembers her grandfather saying, “ No, squirt, I don’t think I’m gonna make it.”
Only a couple months later, he began talking less and started wandering off. The family had to call the police to find him. Ellison was devastated “to find out that something cognitive was happening, but there was no medication, there was no cure.”
Remembering Inez Watson, a trusted childcare expert and loving grandmother
Ellison’s maternal grandmother Watson died of dementia in 2006 at age 85.
She was born in Lake City, Fla., and settled in Richmond with her husband. Watson was great with kids. She quickly became a trusted childcare provider, with parents leaving their kids with her overnight to receive her home remedies for colds and coughs.
Ellison remembers vividly when she first noticed something was wrong. She was visiting her grandmother after school and Grandma Watson was cooking spaghetti.
When Watson started chopping up carrots, Ellison remembers thinking that it didn’t look right. Carrots were not part of her usual spaghetti recipe.
This was one of the first dementia-related behaviors that Watson exhibited. Eventually, the family had to take the knobs off of her stove, to prevent her from the safety risks of cooking. The hardest decision came when Watson had to close her childcare center.
“ That made her decline because she loved those kids,” Ellison said.
Ellison remembers how hard it was for her mother to care for Watson. “My mother was so burnt out [from] taking care of my grandma,” Ellison said. So when her maternal grandfather got sick a year later, Ellison’s mother opted to place him in a nursing home. He died in 2007.
Ellison plans to start caregiver burnout sessions through her foundation, hoping to provide the kind of support and guidance she needed when she and her family members were caregivers.
“ I remember all the psychological things I was going through,” when caring for her paternal grandmother, Ellison said, “and I didn’t have any type of support [except] for going to church.”
Both Janke and Januszewski agree that caregivers bear an enormous burden when caring for someone with Alzheimer’s. They both started caregiver support groups in their respective programs.
“You can’t help them if you’re not OK,” Ellison said.
